


Like The Breaking of Glass

by sluttyspock



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Disability, Disabled Character, Getting Together, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mutual Pining, Physical Disability, Pining, Quidditch, Redeemed Draco Malfoy, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:55:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22158946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sluttyspock/pseuds/sluttyspock
Summary: Harry Potter, 23, is at the height of his career: he’s the highest-paid quidditch player in the world; youngest-ever captain of the Chudley Cannons; and the most decorated seeker in the English national team’s history. Just when it seems like Harry’s soaring high, it all, himself included, quite literally comes crashing down.At the end of Harry’s world, he learns about forgiveness — both of yourself and of others — redemption, and love. And he learns it all from the very last person he’d have expected to: Draco Malfoy, broom-maker.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Other tags will be added/the rating changed as this story progresses

Harry circles the pitch seemingly languidly, perched high above the goalposts. He’s making small loops as he travels across the pitch, keeping his eyes peeled for the barest hint of gold anywhere. It may seem as if he’s inappropriately indolent for such a high-stakes game: the Cannons and the Magpies are practically neck to neck, both in this game and in the league, and it’s up to Harry to catch the snitch and end the game and bring the Cannons through to the Finals. But he knows not to rush and give the game away; the Magpies’ seeker, Miranda Findlay, is zipping around the pitch in such a harried manner Harry wonders how she’s going to be able to spot anything at all. Besides, he has a hunch that the snitch is just around here somewhere. His instincts are proven right yet again when he catches a quick fluttering of gold from his peripheral vision. As quickly as it came, the snitch vanishes, making a turn and flitting away from him. 

Immediately, Harry’s instinct to give chase kicks into overdrive. He leans sharply to the right on his broom to guiding it on a ninety-degree turn that it makes without the slightest jerk. He grips his thighs tighter around the broom handle, knees driving forwards to give it thrust as he drives downwards. The broom — and what a marvel it is, truly — obeys instantaneously, accelerating so fast that the outline of individual spectators in the stand, previously impossible to spot from his previous vantage point, comes into view alarmingly quickly. 

Harry doesn’t feel any measure of fright or of trepidation, however. He feels more alive than ever before. Every part of being a seeker makes him feel alive: the frigid wind whipping around him like little needles prickling into his skin; the thump of his heart against his ribcage; the distant cheers and chants of his name emanating so loudly from the stands that he can hear them even past the howling wind and the blood rushing in his ears. 

He plasters his torso flat against broom, urging it to go ever faster. Harry’s acceleration is outstripping the snitches and the little bugger knows this, he’s sure, if the increasingly frantic flap of its wings is anything to go by. Behind him, he can feel the Miranda trying desperately to get catch up to him, but despite her best efforts, there’s still a good yard or two between them and the distance is increasing. All he can see is the golden snitch directly in his line of sight — it’s so close now, he can make out the intricate detailing on its shell. 

Harry stretches his right arm out. His fingertips brush against the snitches’ wings, but it’s not enough. Come on, Harry. One final push, and Harry surges forward. He can feel the snitch, fluttering, warm, and alive, grazing his palm. All he has to do is clasp his hand around it; it’s so close he can practically taste the post-win celebratory lager already — he flexes his fingers, ready to do so, and — 

The last thing Harry feels before he blacks out is the blunt force of something ramming into his side. 

When he comes to, he can’t move his leg.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One year later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written while on an 18-hour flight with, I admit, only cursory proofreading, so some minor edits will follow for grammar/spelling/etc.

Harry is late. 

He’s really late, but he can’t find it in himself care. If Hermione had wanted to eat and return to work within the stipulated lunch hour, she wouldn’t have invited a cripple out to lunch. 

Slowly, reluctantly, Harry lifts his walker up and lays it back down on the cobblestone with a thump. He’d probably have made greater headway if he had used his MagiCane, but the blasted thing had always discomfited him. Matching his strides automatically, it took away more of Harry’s control over his body than ever. How ironic, he thinks, that the apparatus designed to help invalids only served to heighten his invalidity, even more so than hobbling around with this gigantic muggle contraption.

The cobbled surfaces of the dodgy back alleys in the circuitous route he’s chosen don’t help any, either, but walking through Diagon Alley isn’t an option. The stares and the whispers and the article in the Daily Prophet that’s sure to pop up the next day, remarking with surprise that the Boy Who Lived To Become A Recluse still lived were bad enough, but worse than all of that would be the pity. The pity that would be etched in the expressions of those who stared, the pity that would underlie whispers of “It’s a right shame what happened to him, innit?”, the pity that would weave through every line in the Prophet that called for the public to “give him space” and to “empathise with Harry Potter, who has had one traumatic incident too many in his short life and consequently has been unable to bounce back with the tenacity we’ve come to expect of The Saviour of the Wizarding World.” 

When he’d read that line in an article published just after he’d been discharged, not three months after the accident, he’d cast an incendio so strong it had torched his coffee table as well and narrowly missed setting the entire carpet on fire. 

Fuck them all, honestly. 

He doesn’t much fancy being around people since the accident, especially since he had been swamped by so many in the days right after. Reporters and fans had hovered outside his room day and night, waiting for any shred of news about Harry’s improvement. But no amount of condolences or well-wishes could heal his spinal cord — Lord knows the healers at St Mungo’s had tried — and neither could the lifetime ban on the Magpies’ beater, Antony Glennfitch, from professional quidditch. 

In a panicked attempt to stop Harry from catching the snitch and kicking the Magpies out of the league, Glennfitch had deliberately committed a foul and smashed the bludger in Harry’s direction, intending to knock his broom off-course. But miscalculating the trajectory and the force used, Glennfitch had sent the bludger straight into Harry’s side instead, flinging him off his broom and into the goalposts, where his spine collided against fortified iron and nearly snapped into half. It had taken eighteen hours of intensive surgery and nearly the entire neurology team at St Mungo’s to painstakingly stitch severed nerve ending back to severed nerve ending. It was enough to let Harry regain partial control of his limbs, but even their best efforts couldn’t repair his lumbar enough to return full sensation in the right half of his body. A person who couldn’t control or feel half their body had no sense of balance or peril perioperception. A person without balance couldn’t fly. A person who couldn’t fly couldn’t play quidditch. 

When the media had gotten wind that Harry was beginning physiotherapy, the crowds that would form all the way from Grimmauld Place to the hospital premises to wish him well on his journey to recovery — “All the best, Harry!”; “you can do it, Harry!”; “you’ll be back in the skies in no time, Harry!” — had been too much to bear. He’d requested for the sessions to be held in his house instead, and once he’d improved his gait enough to limp from one end of the house to the other with the aid of his walker, had promptly dismissed the healer, warded Grimmauld Place to the teeth, and basically never left. Thankfully, with his seclusion, the public frenzy over Harry’s accident has eventually died out. There are only so many ways one could rehash the accident and bemoan how terrible the tragedy that had befallen the person who, up till that point, was shaping up to be professional quidditch’s most accomplished seeker, was.

In fact, he wouldn’t even have left Grimmauld Place if it weren’t for the fact that Hermione’s incessant pestering for him to meet up with was driving him insane. He has no idea how, but she had even managed to get a message through his wards, set up against visitors and owls, and even after breaking off his floo connection. So here he is, limping to lunch with Hermione and positively dreading every moment of it. It’s only the hope that meeting up would be enough get her to leave him alone, even if just for awhile, that compels him onwards. 

He’s cutting through a winding alley in a muggle area that borders Wizarding London, about to make his last turn into the road that houses the restaurant, when he notices it. It’s incredibly subtle, and anyone who hadn’t spent a considerable part of their formative years and nearly all their free time as a young adult thereafter surrounded by and obsessed with it wouldn’t have picked it up. It’s the smell of broom oil: high-quality linseed, spiced with orange and cardamom to mask the worst of the smell from the wood varnish, and with the light fragrance of morning dew from the sprinkle of glowworm powder, added to enhance the durability of the wood when consistently exposed to the cold and dampness of the clouds.

It’s the best smell in the world. 

It’s also agonisingly familiar. Rooted to the spot, transfixed by the smell and all its associations, Harry quickly realises why. It’s not just any broom oil, but the specific broom oil that Harry uses. He shakes that thought quickly — the broom oil that he used.

It’s the smell that each of his new brooms, ordered from one of the only remaining handcrafted broom-makers and one of the most prestigious in the entirety of Wizarding Europe, had been delivered with. Smelling it again conjures up the excitement of opening up a new delivery, sent via the haughtiest and most regal looking owls that Harry had ever seen; the exhilaration of giving chase to an elusive golden ball; the exhaustion and yet profound satisfaction after a game well-played.

Each broom from Scorpious Brooms required a six-month lead time, and that was discounting the time spent on the waitlist — that is, if you even got off the waitlist. As the broom-maker crafted each one of his brooms from behind a veil of anonymity, this meant that the brooms were never custom-made. Regardless, every broom Harry had ever ordered had come out perfect: with a seat and a grip so well-moulded to his person it could very well have been bespoke, lightweight for unparalleled thrust and speeds, while remaining heavy enough to afford the rider satisfying contact with the broom, critical for steering in different directions. 

Like the broom-maker himself, the brand was enigmatic: it seemingly sprang up from nowhere and was offered to Harry to test by his manager. Harry had been sceptical, at first, fearing that it was yet another conglomerate seeking endorsement for their product, but, trusting that his manager would know by now that Harry had no interest in being a commercial sellout, had heeded his suggestion. A few spins around the pitch later, Harry had never been more glad that he did. The pickup and smoothness of the ride was unlike any broom Harry had ever ridden, and by the end of the test, Harry had been so impressed with it that he had left his Firebolt V8 at home and instead elected to fly on a hitherto unheard of brand of broom at his next game. The tumbling dive that Harry had executed on his first Scorpious, grabbing the snitch while suspended upside down, mid-tumble, before the broom had seamlessly righted itself, had solidified both his and the broom’s elite status.

Harry hadn’t expected to come across that smell again; he’d long since expunged every painful reminder of the sport he had expected to dedicate his life to and could not. Jerseys and quidditch leathers were unceremoniously vanished and all associated paraphernalia — snitches caught, trophies won, brooms flown — shut in a trunk that Kreacher obediently hauled down to the deepest cellar of the Black ancestral home.

It’s a bad idea to seek out the source of that smell, Harry knows. The reminder of what he loved — still loves — but could never have again cannot be anything but painful. Yet, he can’t seem to stop himself all the same. 

He traces it to a nondescript hole-in-the-wall. Located on the side face of the building, there are piles of garbage piled high on the stoop. Harry’s nearly a hundred percent sure that puddle he had stepped in on the way over was piss. The door’s in equally terrible condition. What must once have been a deep green has now faded to a greenish-grey, and there are parts of the wooden door has been bitten hollow by termites and are on the verge of chipping off entirely. There’s no knocker or doorbell that Harry can locate, but he’s sure that what lies behind this door is definitely the source of the wonderful smell that had wafted his way. For one, he can make out the slight shimmering of the magical wards all around its periphery. 

Gripping his walker more tightly with his left hand, he leans forward and pushes the door open with his right. There’s a current of electricity that travels up his arm when his hand makes contact with the door, but it’s dull and doesn’t really hurt. Surprisingly, the door swings open on creaky hinges without the need for much force. The door slams shut immediately after he steps in, bathing him in near-complete darkness despite the daylight outside. There aren’t any windows, and the sole source of light is a small pool of candlelight streaming out from a room at the end of the corridor. The smell of broom oil is also stronger than ever, seeming to suffuse the entire foyer and wrapping around Harry’s person. Emboldened, Harry shuffles forward towards the source of the light, setting his walker down as quietly as he can with each step. 

Once he steps into the room, the sight that greets Harry makes his heart clench and his eyes prickle with tears. Lining all four walls of the room are floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves and on each one of them perches neat rows of shiny, new brooms, their polished wooden handles and golden fastenings gleaming in the flickering candlelight offered by candles hovering at either end of each shelf. In the centre of the room rests a large mahogany table that undoubtedly had seen better days. On its weathered surface lie neat stacks of parchment. When Harry goes closer for a better look, he sees that the top of each sheet in one of the piles is labelled with a series of seemingly random numbers and letters. Underneath this underlined label, complex symbols and equations that Harry vaguely recognises from Advanced Charms and Transfiguration fill the entire page.

There is another pile beside it, this one comprised of larger than usual sheets and featuring sketches of different brooms. Underneath each design are corresponding strings of letters and numbers neatly underlined, and Harry surmises that they must be titles of broom designs. They’re rendered in short, quick strokes, undoubtedly by a confident and careful hand, with a multitude of annotations extending out from different parts of the sketch in perfectly straight lines. 

_To counteract unfavourable headwinds,_ one note reads, referencing the tip of the broom that’s sharpened to a point, with deep cuts along the circumference of the unusually designed nose. _Stability during dives?_ it continues. 

All the drawings are similarly riddled with note after note, detailing reasons behind the swooping lines of each curve and each edge, the selection of material and spellwork, and peppered with the occasional self-questioning remark. The observations of flying patterns, matched against its design, surrounded by the rich smell of wood, and feeling the energetic thrumming of charmed bristles ready to take, overwhelms Harry and he is assaulted with vivid memories of flying. A tear escapes and rolls down his cheek, his heart constricting painfully, and he can feel his right leg completely, and it’s clenching and flexing, tightening around a broom the way he has always known to do. 

Just as suddenly as feeling returns to Harry’s useless, mangled leg, it disappears as he feels a body bind take hold of him, wrapping his legs close together. Unfortunately, it also plasters his arms close to his body, and upon losing the grip on his walker, Harry also loses his balance and tumbles sideways and onto the floor, knocking his walker over on the way down as well. 

“What the fuck?” he exclaims where he lies in an unmoving, ungraceful heap, the metal of his walker digging painfully into flesh. 

“Potter?” comes the incredulous voice above him. It must be a day for uncomfortable reminders of his past, Harry supposes, because he definitely recognises that voice as well as the short, offended consonants that spit his name out like a curse. 

When he peers upwards, squinting on account of the fact that his glasses have been knocked askew, he can make out skin and hair that are so pale they take on the golden tinge of the room. The angular, defined jawline is familiar as well, as is the high and perfectly straight nose bridge, upon which sits a pair of glasses that looks remarkably similar to his, albeit thinner-rimmed and golden rather than black. Gazing behind the lens of the glasses, Harry locks eyes with a pair the colour of a sea storm, glittering and grey and just as furious. 

“Malfoy? What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Me?” Malfoy responds with an imperious scoff. God, the wanker was really hasn’t changed since fifteen. “Seeing as I am the proprietor of this establishment and you are the one trespassing on my premises, perhaps I should be the one asking you that question instead.”

 _Proprietor?_ Harry thinks to himself. _But that would mean —_

“You’re Scorpious?!” 

“Well, I do own Scorpious Brooms, if that’s what you mean,” Malfoy replies, crossing his arms across his chest. His mouth is twisted in the scowl that’s all too familiar to Harry from their teenaged years, and his jaw is clenched so tightly Harry can see the muscle twitching and jumping underneath skin. 

All of this only serves to inflame Harry. How dare Malfoy tarnish this wonderful, lovely, sacred place with his presence and the suggestion that he’s the broom-maker behind Harry’s career, and whose career Harry in turn had made, was preposterous. As if tumbling down onto the floor, powerless to stop his own descend, at least once everyday wasn’t enough, here Malfoy was, aiding his own traitorous body along. The knowledge that he has been by Malfoy into using his goddamn brooms for years burns bitter in the pit of Harry’s stomach, and effectively tarnishes the last vestiges of happy memories of flying that Harry retains.

“Are you going to help me up, or do you take joy from pushing cripples down?” Harry spits out.

He sees Malfoy’s eyes take on a dangerous glint, eyes flashing with such anger that for a minute Harry is sure there would be a repeat of sixth year and Malfoy would being his heel down on Harry’s nose again. Malfoy’s chest heaves with several deep breaths and by the end of it, seems to decide against doing whatever he was compelled to initially. Huffing audibly, Malfoy retrieves his wand from his back pocket, releasing Harry from the body bind with a quick, elegant flick of his wrist. 

He bends down to grab Harry by the shoulders and sit him up, but Harry only shrugs off the help, irritated. It’s a lot harder to push himself up and off the ground by himself, with only one half of his limbs effectively functional, but he’ll be damned before he lets Malfoy humiliate him further than he already has. It takes a few more tries and a lot of determination, but eventually, with the help of the edge of the table, Harry manages to haul himself upright while Malfoy stands there, looking on uselessly while Harry struggles. The walker remains prostrate on the floor. 

“How did you come in?” is the first thing Malfoy says to him when they’re face-to-face, Harry learning his left side against the table for support. Malfoy’s arms have returned to their defensive position, crossed in front of his chest. “The wards are electric, and the shock it delivers should have been enough to immobilise anyone before they can enter.”

Harry thinks on this — that must have been the zing that up his arm when he first touched the door. Why hadn’t the wards worked? It can’t be that the wards are specially configured not to hurt him, but he had barely felt anything. 

With a start, Harry realises that he hadn’t been affected because the nerve endings on his right sight are barely sensational. The wards are strong enough to cause a full-grown wizard to pass out with a simple touch and yet all Harry had registered was a pathetic little zing up his arms, and gods, the last thing he needs right now is a reminder of just how useless his body has become. 

“Forget it,” Harry mumbles, and bends down, both to pick up his walker and to hide his face. To his horror, he can feel the prickle of hot, angry tears threatening to burst forth. He needs to get out of here, he must; his head is spinning; he can barely breathe, oh god. 

“Potter,” comes Malfoy’s voice again. It loses the confrontational edge it had had and instead comes out carefully neutral and devoid of emotion. Not bothering to look up at Malfoy, Harry continues to struggle to reach for his walker while holding onto the table, but long, pale hands beat him to it. Malfoy’s sets the walker upright. Wordlessly, Harry returns his hands to the walker. He grips it so tight his knuckles turn white and begins a slow, ambling, turn around to head out. He’s suddenly inexplicably exhausted and has to focus all his energy on putting one foot in front of the other to prevent himself from passing out on the cold stone floor. Behind him, Malfoy stares a hole into his back the entire way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgot to mention that the title is from Hozier’s wonderful song, Wasteland, baby! which I read as a song about how love makes the end of the world bearable.
> 
> I’ve got the entire story planned out, too, and here’s to hoping that I have the stamina to write and post regularly 🥵 but thus far I’ve been doing all my writing on planes and I’ve got rather a number of trips coming up for work, so fingers crossed!


End file.
